


Coal Region

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-02
Updated: 2011-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after his mother's death, Dean gets lost in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coal Region

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the hoodie_time [Halloween/Autumn themed h/c comment fic meme](http://community.livejournal.com/hoodie_time/228233.html) on LiveJournal, prompt by is too long to quote, but you can find it [here](http://community.livejournal.com/hoodie_time/228233.html?thread=2444169#t2444169)

The woods smelled of wood smoke, roasting meat, and apples. The cold air made it sharper, tangier almost. Dean would follow his nose, but he was no bloodhound, and the smell was everywhere, like he was standing right on top of the stove.

And wouldn't that be nice. It'd be warm, at least, and whomever was doing the cooking could tell him where the fuck he was.

 _"Well, if it ain't Jimmy Dean. Still too good to hang with us, Jimmy Dean?"_

 _"Fuck off, Tully."_

 _"Your loss, asshole."_

And it was, wasn't it, because Dean just had to turn off the road and into the woods, just to get away from that fucking pusher and his high and mighty friends. _"Nothing else to do in this town,"_ and yeah, maybe, but that didn't mean it was a good idea to get trashed behind the wheel. If the inevitable high speed crash didn't kill him, his dad would.

 _Dad loomed over the table, hand grasping for the next bottle, and yeah, Dean got it. Ten years and Dad just needed his alone time with Jose for the day._

Dean got it, alright, but that didn't mean he wanted to fucking see it, see his fucking hero get wasted and cry his goddamn eyes out like he did every year. He'd be useless for the next two days at least, when all his kids wanted was to get the fuck out of this dead mining town, get out of Pennsylvania and on the road to Anywhere Else But Here.

There weren't even beer cans nestled into the dead leaves, anymore, and if anything told Dean he'd wandered too far from civilization, it was that. He pulled his flannel tighter around his body and tucked his arms into his pits. The cold punched right through the cloth, seeped down through his skin until it lodged into his joints. He should have brought a jacket, but he wasn't going to be out here this long. He'd just needed a breather, and anyway, the afternoon had been warm enough.

Fucking stupid. Like Dean didn't know how fast it got cold around here, how quick the sun dropped behind the mountains. They'd been here a month, and yeah, that was a month too damn long, but it was long enough for Dean to know better. There was no excuse for this kind of carelessness, and if Dean ever made it out of the woods, his dad would be sure to remind him of that.

Just as soon as he found his way out of the bottle.

 _"Why can't we just go? Dad's back. We should be leaving."_

 _"We just need to wait a little longer, Sam. Okay? We'll go in a couple of days."_

 _Sam hufffed and threw his book across the room. He flipped over and stuffed his face into the pillow like he was two years old instead of ten. "They don't even have a real library here."_

Because a lack of reading material was just what was wrong with this place. Dean snorted to himself, winced, then wiped his nose on his hand. The snot seemed to freeze across his knuckle, and his chapped nostrils burned. He shivered and stumbled on, smacking his shoulder into one of the skinny-ass trees crowding in around him.

Maybe it was, just a little. Sam had been reading the same damn book for two weeks, some hippie crap about a kid running away from home to live in the wilderness, carving himself a fucking house by setting fire to a tree. Because that fucking made sense. It was just the sort of book bound to give Sam "ideas", maybe not about living off the land -- the kid liked his hot showers and new books too much to ever go that route -- but about leaving, ditching Dean and Dad to live on his own.

The last town, he'd had something about kids in a museum. Dean wanted to know why authors thought it was a good fucking idea to write kids books about running away from home.

Dean gave the trees around him a hard look. Like any of these bitches was even remotely thick enough to build a house in. And anyway, he'd left his lighter at home. He pulled out his knife and hacked an X into the trunk next to him, then stumbled on a little further. It was too dark to really see the markings, but he had the suspicion he'd been going around in circles, and he was well and truly fucked if he tried to navigate his way through the woods without some sort of damn landmark to guide him.

Something yowled farther up the mountain -- a fox or a mountain lion. Sounded just human enough to make him flinch, just wrong enough to make him shudder. He slid slowly down the trunk of the next tree he ran into, pulling his knees up to his chest and bending his head over them. Walking around wasn't keeping him warm enough, and it was probably just getting him more lost. He'd have to bunker down where he was, and hope the night wasn't so cold that he couldn't make it until morning.

Dean fucking hated the woods.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there before he heard something trundling through the leaves towards him, a steady *thrunksh thrunksh* punctuated by an occasional crack of a fallen branch. Too large for a fox, even probably a mountain lion. Dean tried to remember if there were bears in Pennsylvania, wasn't sure if he'd ever actually known.

With his luck, it was a wendigo, or maybe fucking Bigfoot. Except Bigfoot didn't exist, and any wendigo in the area would have been snacking on the locals well before Dean had managed to get his fool ass lost.

It figured, then. Dean was going to get eaten by a fucking bear. He pressed himself back tighter against the tree, trying to compress his shivering limbs into the smallest form possible. Maybe the bear would think he was a rock.

"Dean!"

Fuck, the bear knew his name.

"Dean, goddammit, this isn't funny!"

No, it really fucking wasn't. Dean scrabbled at the leaves, thinking for a moment that he could pull them over himself like a blanket. His hands wrapped around a decent sized stick, and he pulled that to him instead, trying to remember what you were supposed to do if a bear attacked. He thought maybe he was meant to hit it in the nose, but that might've been sharks.

The footsteps drew closer, and the shouting louder, until the sounds seemed to press in against him in dark. Dean pushed himself carefully into a crouch, branch clutched in cold, aching fingers. He was probably going to die, which was so fucking stupid it wasn't funny, but he'd be damned if he didn't take the bear out with him.

A shape, huge and hulking and way too thick to be a wendigo, pulled itself away from the dark lines of the trees. It blinded him as its light swept past where he was crouching, and he grit his teeth and leaped.

It was probably a good thing he was so fucking cold. Dad was pretty drunk, and if he'd landed his blow, he couldn't be sure his father wouldn't shoot him dead before either of them had a chance to work out what the hell was going on. Instead, Dean found himself whacking at empty air before Dad's warm arms wrapped around his torso, lifting him bodily from the ground.

"Dammit to hell, Dean."

Dean froze, taken as much off guard by the waft of tequila passing by his nose as he was by the sudden warmth of his father's leather jacketed grip. He tensed, his mind taking a few moments to catch up with events, then sagged, relief deflating him like an old balloon.

"Dad."

"Christ, Dean." Dad set him down and spun him, then pulled him back in, pressing Dean's face into his shoulder. "You're a freaking icicle."

Dean tried to think of a witty response to that, but his voice had latched onto "Dad," and wouldn't be letting it go any time soon. His father didn't seem to mind, just held him close against his body, rubbing his hands over Dean's back and arms until Dean felt raw and tingly.

"Too good to wear a goddamn jacket, are you, Dean?"

Dean shrugged, his face still stuffed into his father's shirt, where it was warm and quiet and safe, if a little fragrant. "Thought you were a bear."

Dad laughed, then spun him again, steering his uneasy steps over fallen logs and leaf-covered rocks until they reached the road, from which it was a long, curse-filled fifty yards to the old farmhouse they'd picked out to call home. Sam waited at the doorway to catch Dean's stumble up the steps and steer him towards the bathroom, and what little hot water the ancient boiler in the basement managed to pump out. "You're an idiot," he said.

Dean couldn't think of a comeback, so he just said "Face," then added a few "fuck"s for good measure.

When he made it back out of the shower, feeling a ten times warmer and a million times more with it, Dad was waiting for him, sitting at the table with a giant glass of water and a bottle of aspirin. Dean winced and braced himself, but all Dad did was look him over and shake his head.

"We're leaving tomorrow," he said, and Dean resisted the urge to pump his fist into the air. "Heading up north. It's about time I got you boys some wilderness training."

 _Mother fucking goddamn son of a bitch._

Forget the wrath of Dad. _Sam_ was going to kill him for this one.

\- end -


End file.
